Stay architecturally enlightened!

ShowCase: Vectorfields, Pt. 2 - City Futura

ShowCase is an on-going feature series on Archinect, presenting exciting new work from designers representing all creative fields and all geographies.

We are always accepting nominations for upcoming ShowCase features - if you would like to suggest a project, please send us a message.

This ShowCase, City Futura, is Part 2 of a two-episode installment dedicated to the exciting work of Los Angeles-based firm BplusU and their recently published book Vectorfields . To also see Part 1, click here .

“City Futura” is a visionary urban design proposal for an expansion of the City of Milan set in the year 2210. The project is part of a development plan for fifteen different sites located on the outer ring connected by the Milan Metro line. An eclectic international group of architects including Mad Office from Beijing, R&sie(n) from Paris, Rojkind Arquitectos from Ciudad de México and B+U from Los Angeles among others were invited to each choose one of the available sites and envision an “arch-urban object”. Our site is located in the North-West part of the city close to Piazzale Giovanni dalle Bande Nere adjacent to the Bande Nere metro train station. City Futura is superimposed over the existing city leaving most of its buildings untouched and tapping into existing infrastructure and expand it.

↑ Click image to enlarge
BplusU's visionary urban design proposal "City Futura" for an expansion of the City of Milan set in the year 2210

Urban design concept - Tissue and Void

The 600m tall structure hovers over the city covering about a million square meter area and is divided into nine districts that are organized around three programmatic topics including: A- Civic; B- Entertainment and Recreation; and C-Art, Fashion and Manufacturing. Initially the nine districts were represented as spherical void spaces and randomly placed across the site, floating above the ground and varying in size and height they became placeholders for enormous civic arenas which expand up to 250 meters in diameter.

↑ Click image to enlarge

City Futura is superimposed over the existing city and tapping into existing infrastructure
These public super centers act as a scaffold for developing a new kind of urban tissue that is not defined by conventional massing and zoning rules within a two dimensional city grid but are based on emergent growth models and developed by linking together families of massing elements that form larger subsystems in-between and around these public hubs, which then in turn are linked again to give rise to a grander systems vastly expanding across the city. Elevating this system off the ground exposes the underside of the city, a quasi sixth façade. It allowed us to rethink the city quite literally from the ground up envisioning how one might move through it and how infrastructure might develop, how our spatial perception and experience might change, how our organizational models can be expanded and new interrelations can be made.

↑ Click image to enlarge
Civic arenas inside the structure can expand up to 250 meters in diameter↑ Click image to enlarge

The 600m tall structure hovers over the city covering about a million square meter area
City Futura touches ground and connects with the “old” city at several strategically important locations, which are related to existing or newly proposed infrastructure, including train stations, metro lines and sky trains that connect the 70,000 plus inhabitants of this new part of town with the rest of Milan and the world. The Districts that can be best described as enormous public outdoor spaces, which expand vertically and horizontally approximating the spherical void, which based on its geometry is mostly covered, but has large openings bringing in daylight and expanding views to the city all around.

Driving underneath one of these vibrant hubs will be an impressive experience and visually draw you up into these hyper-dense urban centers that appear to be floating hundreds of meters above you. One of the largest hubs is the Entertainment and Recreation district (represented on the close up rendering), that includes for example a 5,000 seat outdoor amphitheater for film, opera, dance and music; a playhouses, clubs, restaurants, movie theaters mixed in several vertical green spaces that in total exceed the size of Central Park in New York City.

↑ Click image to enlarge
City Futura site plan↑ Click image to enlarge
City Futura diagram

The building volumes connecting the districts with each other consist of an exuberant and highly differentiated massing morphology that provides around 6.5 million square meters of housing, offices and commercial spaces and is the core structure for this urban vision of Milan’s future.

City Futura is currently featured at the 12th Architecture Biennale in Venice, Italy from August 29 – November 21, 2010: Venezia, Giardini and Arsenale, opening times: 10 a.m. – 6 p.m.

BplusU is a full service architecture firm headquartered in Los Angeles, California, established in 2000 by architects Herwig Baumgartner and Scott Uriu who have over 15 years of professional experience each. BplusU's mission is to push the boundaries of architecture and urban design. Using technology and research in combination with hands-on design, their projects are often informed by the mapping and transforming of imperceptible forces using sonograms. BplusU has developed analytic and generative software that has allowed them to implement their theories into three dimensional form. BplusU is on a continuous mission to research and experiment with new technologies, building materials and construction techniques using 3-d technology and manufacturing techniques, often from outside of the architectural profession.

BplusU has worked on projects nationwide and abroad. Their work comprises cultural projects (including museums, concert halls and exhibition spaces), educational and transportation facilities, master planning and urban design, offices and mixed use developments, restaurants, and residential work. BplusU recently completed the Frank/Kim residence in Pasadena, California (2010) and is currently working on a variety of projects including: a mixed use development in Downey - Los Angeles (2012); City Futura - an urban development project for Milan, Italy (2030); a housing development in the United Arab Emirates (2012); Soundcloud - an event structure in Downtown Los Angeles, California (2009); the CKC residence in Pasadena, California (2009); and others.

BplusU's work was recently exhibited at: the 12th Architecture Biennale in Venice, The A+D museum in Los Angeles, the Milan Stadtkrone show, in Milan, Italy; at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna; and at the CCRD in Hollywood, California. Their work has been widely published in magazines and books such as Architectural record, Angeleno magazine, Azure magazine, The Architect's Newspaper, FORM magazine, Future Arquitecturas, Architecture live 6, Elemente magazine, Interior and Design, Dialog, 360 Modern Architecture, ArcCA, Mark magazine, The 1000 x Architecture of the Americas, Capital magazine, Arte magazine, Archinect, as well as on television and radio interviews.

Related Archinect Profiles

3 Comments

My first impression is that the scheme lacks a context and the juxtaposition over the city is quite radical, hovering overhead like an invasion, in a sci-fi way, like the 2005 Tom Cruise War of the Worlds or the 1996 Independence Day.

Nevertheless the juxtaposition of 'something completely different' (apology to Monty Python) has it's precedent in expressionist and early modernist, especially Soviet constructivist, works.

El Lissitsky's urban skyhook project has a similar overhanging juxtaposition and about the same period are Mies photo-montages that merge the new glass and steel modernism into several Berlin urban settings. The overall collision of old and new, above and below, gives the project its sense of the dramatic, although this is very heavy handed.

Recent floating urban structures include Yona Friedman's space-grid scheme in Paris, and that same radical reworking of the city are projects by SuperStudio, Archigram, and the Biomorphic Biosphere by my friend Glen Small. There are many others.

As a shape this project is almost a direct mimic of 1920s organic expressionist work by Hermann Finsterlin. I am thinking of Finsterlin's CASA NOVA project but any Finsterlin will do. Finsterlin's style is instantly recognizable.

The program looks as if it reproduces 'in the air' what the 'ground-dwellers' already possess. The opportunity for transparency is mostly covered up by by the mollusk-like forms. Finally, is the reason for this mega-structure mainly to bring super-sized entertainment spectacles to a few new super venues? What were you trying to accomplish?